


What Happens in Black Mesa

by MisMisto



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Beer, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Gender-neutral Reader, No Caltech or MIT students were harmed in the making of this fic, No Romance As of Yet, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Reader-Insert, black mesa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23874760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisMisto/pseuds/MisMisto
Summary: As the freshest recruit of Black Mesa’s Biology department, you were tasked with only seemingly menial tasks that should test your ability of whether you can apply your hard earned PhD experience at California Institute of Technology (or Caltech amongst Friends™) to practice by performing the check-ups of more than a hundred residents a month! Oh what a time to be alive! (In case you’ve forgotten, your research was about the stress tolerance of plants)a.k.a. the time when you met Gordon and Barney and immediately got into trouble.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun & Reader, Everyone & Beer, Gordon Freeman & Reader
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	What Happens in Black Mesa

**Author's Note:**

> Trying something really new to me so I'm really not sure whether I'll continue, but who wouldn't want to give these bois a hug?

_It was a lukewarm summer’s evening. The sun’s last molten hues illuminated the Black Mesa Research Facility sprawling through the red soil of New Mexico. It’s been almost three hours since working hours ended, but the facility was still buzzing with activity. Security guards were changing shifts, engineers were triple checking their equipment, janitors were preparing laboratories for the next day, and scientists were rushing back to their labs because they’d forgotten to turn off their argon lasers, only to see that the janitors already had and the facility had in fact not gone up in flames._

_You were one such person, a twenty-something year old graduate having joined the jolly bunch only four months ago. As the freshest recruit of Black Mesa’s Biology department, you were tasked with only seemingly menial tasks that should test your ability of whether you can apply your hard earned PhD experience at California Institute of Technology (or Caltech amongst Friends™) to practice by performing the check-ups of more than a hundred residents a month! Oh what a time to be alive! (In case you’ve forgotten, your research was about the stress tolerance of plants)_

_Certainly, the newest additions to any work environment must stick together, as you were all equally busy with critically important tasks such as yours, and at the end of a stressful day at work, a relaxing aura of amity amongst new acquaintances was just what everyone needed._

_Or so you thought._

**25 th of June, 1997: The Shitshow ******

I admit I initially paid no heed to Prof. Benzer’s advice to keep a private journal to document my time at Black Mesa, as ninety percent of my job included writing lab reports 24/7 and I saw no need to spend my time with trivial matters such as writing a diary, but I’ve never heard him give advice that wasn’t going to end up biting you in the ass sooner or later if you didn’t take it. You can see from a multitude failed entries littering the computer that I’ve tried writing several times, but there was simply nothing I could write about that didn’t violate the NDA guidelines of Black Mesa. Until today, that is.

Here’s roughly how it went.

We were wrapping up the project about fungal symbiosis, and the only lab work for today was an RBC count for one of the kids (Lovely girl! Hope I finally wrote her name correctly in the last file). It seemed like a fairly uneventful day, which was unusual for Black Mesa. Usually we have a malfunction there, some fire there, one guy’s cat sneaks in the laser room and tries to play with the beams, etc. But nope. Not one accident, not one slip up as far as I’d heard. Maybe they were just extra careful that news of any mishap did not circulate too much, because coincidentally it was the new guy’s first day below ground. I was overjoyed at first to hear there was someone new on board. BM usually doesn’t bother looking for science recruits unless it’s absolutely necessary. I didn’t know if I should’ve been worried because it meant that some people were up to something really big (we all know how that ends. If you don’t remember what happened last time, GOOD), or happy because we have a newcomer. I ignored my nagging thoughts and chose the latter.

I decided to bite the bullet and ambush him in the mess hall, and the poor guy nearly spilt all his chocolate pudding. I convinced him that I was in fact _not_ here to murder him in cold blood by joking about how our chocolate pudding left a lot to be desired, and that it would’ve been better if it had met its end prematurely. He made a remark about being used to non-Newtonian puddings from school, but said he appreciated the thought nonetheless. His name is Gordon Freeman. Twenty-four years old, Seattle-born (apparently the only casual clothing he owns are flannel shirts). Likes physics, bugs, taking naps and weird-textured puddings. Tall, red hair, green eyes, goatee, thick rimmed glasses, absolutely not hard on the eyes. At first he seemed like a pretty okay guy, then I learned he was MIT and I vowed to never let my guard down like that ever again. I resigned from my position and gave up all my worldly belongings to become a gun for hire.

Okay, okay, it wasn’t _that_ bad. The guy’s… fine. Not sure about the ponytail though (but again I used to have a mullet so I will no longer comment on this matter). Very soft-spoken, easy to talk to (a rarity in our field these days), but seemed kind of shy. I know I was overwhelmed when I first joined, so I sympathised with him. After sitting down and finishing our late evening snacks, we decided to hang out together until it was time to return to our dorms. It was around 6 pm, so there was little foot traffic and no risk of anything blowing up in the labs, so I thought it was the perfect time to show him around. How to get from his dorm to the labs (he got insta-clearance for Sector 2 in Anomalous Materials, damn), how to find the cafeteria in the middle of the night, what to do when you get lost and what number to call if he gets unidentified goo on his skin; basically it was like being back in college all over again. It was refreshing, and I noticed that he was visibly relaxed at the end of my little tutorial, so I took it as a sign of a job well done. At the end of the day we took a calm, uneventful tram ride during which we exchanged some more embarrassing undergrad memories that should keep him satisfied for a while, then we called it a day and everyone went to their rooms.

Well, not quite.

Seems like the accident-free status of Black Mesa could only last so long, because the tram had a malfunction and we were suspended above a chasm for almost half an hour. I took it really well with minimum screaming. Surprisingly the new guy took it better than any one of us, seemingly even better than the security guard who happened to be on the same tram, because he’d started muttering under his breath and fumbling around in his jacket. Turns out he was even calmer than any of us combined, because when I asked if he was okay he quickly waved away my worries and said he had just the thing for this situation. I was expecting a radio of some sort, or nausea medication, or even some water, but then the guy whipped out _five cans of beer out of his pockets_. When we were understandably a little hesitant about taking free beer from a complete stranger, he insisted that “they’re still cold fellas.” While normally that would’ve completely put me off, he held one of them out towards us and gave me a little wink. Since I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in over five months and his enthusiasm was so infectious, I thought eh, what’s the harm.

Lo and behold it was still cold, just as promised. I relayed my observation, Freeman turned and looked at him in sheer awe. It didn’t take too long for him to recover and state his doubts about that, but when he held the beer he actually recoiled from how cold it was and the poor guy’s jaw dropped to the floor. The guard looked remarkably smug (I can’t blame him), and told us that these Black Mesa guard jackets were life savers. And before we asked, yes he’d heard from the radio that help was on the way and said that we’d better hurry and drink up or else we’d miss the chance to say we had beer in the middle of a bottomless pit. It’s not like I have many friends that will stare at me in envy when I tell them about my adventures in a secret government facility with a fellow nerd and a random guard, but I admit I was desperate for anything that resembled silly fun, and I suspect this was true for the others as well. So we all sat down, clinked our beers and exchanged embarrassing undergrad memories, so that part wasn’t a complete lie.

True enough, soon after we finished our beers the tram started moving again. An engineer talked to us through the speaker about the failsafe mechanisms of the tram and that there was no possibility of it detaching, hence no reason to panic. It would’ve been better if we’ve been told about this before my screaming session, but I guess the unprecedented beer party did the trick just as well, and although this was definitely a stressful situation by itself, I felt more relaxed than I had been in months.

I was still shaking when we got off the tram, and I had to lean against the wall because of how wobbly my legs were. Freeman was also pale as a sheet but he assured us that the chances of him throwing up were practically null now that he had some beer, though I bet the force with which the guard slapped his back made him rethink his words for a moment. He said he was happy he could help and finally introduced himself as Barney Calhoun- yet another new addition to Black Mesa, just short of five months! He said he would’ve liked for us to meet under less dangerous circumstances, but that we were welcome to drop by his place or just give him a call if we ever needed anything. Our little group had assembled less than an hour ago, but in that short amount of time we somehow managed to form a dynamic that I’ve never experienced outside of an academic setting. It was incredible how quickly everyone clicked with each other; I suspect it was partly because of the exciting, near-catastrophic experience, and in due no small part to Barney’s warm demeanour that helped us make the most out of being stuck together. The guy just seemed have that effect on people.

After we hugged it out, said our goodbyes and went to our separate dorms, Gordon rang my landline telephone which I doubt had ever been used since when it was first installed. The clever bastard had actually managed to figure out how the intercom system worked and called me for a test run, and I doubt _anybody_ really knew how it worked except maybe the administrator and a couple of others. He mentioned how he’d recognised my name from a NatGeo article he’d read a few years ago (the chimp one) and how he was excited to meet me, and I told him I’d also recognised his name from MIT Technology Review. I admitted that I’d understood just about nothing from what he’d written except it was something really cool and about how lasers behaved in the molecular level. Then I realised what I’d just said and tried to deny that I’ve even seen any magazine called “Technology Vision or somethin” but he’d already started laughing. Thankfully he was a good sport and we joked about our rivalry before bringing up Black Mesa again. He thanked profusely for showing him around and helping him meet with so many people whom he’d otherwise never had the courage to talk to and I applauded him for taking everything so well because it sure as hell hadn’t been easy for me, even without any tram malfunctions. Then he said he really appreciated all the help and that I seemed like a genuinely good person, and I definitely did not memorize this entire conversation because it was the best compliment I’ve gotten in months. After checking our schedules and seeing we both didn’t have much to do after work tomorrow, we promised to meet up again and see if Barney was up to joining if he was off his shift by that time.

All things considered, today could’ve gone far worse, and I finally got acquainted with people who were younger than 40 for once. Not that I’m bothered by being surrounded with cutting-edge technology and people from all around the world who are experts in their fields, but sometimes I forget there’s more to life than science or the peace and quiet. One of our biggest struggles as scientists is forming a balance between our work and the human element, and I feel like these guys will help me get there sooner than I would’ve thought.

Right, now that that’s out of my system, I’ll get to organising my files and getting ready for tomorrow. Whether I’ll write more of these is something I’ll discover in the coming days, but something tells me I won’t be running out of things to write about anytime soon.

-D.M., PhD


End file.
